The lives of women during the Church Reform and the Twelfth Century Renaissance did not dramatically improve! The number of nunneries may have skyrocketed after the election of Gregory VII but it didn’t mean that it was easy for them and that boundless opportunities...

Assessing the failures of Charlemagne’s rule, historian F.L. Ganshof famously argued that “[Charlemagne] left the Frankish state as he found it.” In my opinion, F.L. Ganshof meant that Charlemagne left his empire weak and divided, just like before he became the...

Between Byzantine, Islamic, and Frankish worlds, the state that deserves the title of Rome’s successor is Byzantine. Although Byzantine got most of their culture from Greece, they were able to continue and expand Rome’s traditions in many different ways. The Eastern...

The gender norms and roles in the Roman Empire and Early Germanic society had some similarities, but they vastly differ when it came to penalties or punishments. However, we can conclude that the conditions of women improved in Western Europe as barbarians adopted the...